Friday, January 09, 2004
New Year's Eve (Last update of the Year)
Well, I thought that I'd have time to catch up on my Blog during vacation, but it turns out that I was mistaken. I was too busy, so now I've got even more to catch up on. Such is life.
Also note that I'm planning on revamping the picture section, so that things are better organized and easier to update for me. The pictures posted on the website have been compressed, so if you happen to see a picture there that you would like I can send you the original file. The originals are about 1MB in size.
12/29/03 - Monday
Today Masato had to go to his part time job, which is teaching at a cram school. I think he's an English and Japanese language teacher, but I'm not really sure.
On the way back from dropping him off, his mom and I ended up stopping at an Okonomiyaki (sorry if I spell it wrong, it's a bit hard to type since with my keyboard layout almost all the letters are on the left hand side) restaurant for lunch, since I've never had Okonomiyaki before and wanted to try it. The restaurant seemed to be trying to present a "traditional Japan" atmosphere, which included having the lockers for your shoes at the door, and having to sit on mats on the floor. It was nicely done.
While I was in the bathroom, his mom ordered for us, and by the time I got back they had already brought the materials for making it. In this place, there's a big pan embedded in the middle of the table, and you make your own Okonomiyaki. I've heard Okonomiyaki called Japanese pizza, but I think a much better description would be an omelet with more vegetables and less egg.
I thought it tasted OK, but I didn't like it all that much. I'm not sure what kind I had, but I think it was a seafood flavor, which may explain why I didn't like it all that much. Since I didn't get a chance to see the menu, I have no idea what kind of things are available as far as Okonomiyaki goes.
After lunch we went to a department store (I think it's called "D2" or something like that) to get some decorations for New Years. There I saw some foam pads that I thought would be perfect for putting under my DDR pads to give them some padding (dancing on the tile floor is hard on my feet). These pads, however, were a bit smaller than I thought the DDR pads are, so we asked if there were any bigger ones. The saleslady brought some thermal blanket pad things from the camping section, and we thought that those would probably be big enough if we put two of them together. Masato's mom asked if there was anything else I needed or wanted, and I told her no. I couldn't think of anything I needed, and anyway, I felt bad that they were spending as much money as they were on me. I wouldn't be surprised that they would drive themselves into bankruptcy before they stopped offering to buy stuff for me.
After the store we went to a little building which contained a machine used to shell rice. You stick in some coins, dump in the rice, and it comes out all white and pretty. I'm surprised they don't have a home version of this, since the Japanese eat so much rice.
By this time it was time to go get Aki from her cram school. When we got there Aki said that her friend wanted to meet me, so I got out of the car and went to the entrance to meet her friend. The friend hid behind Aki and wouldn't say anything. Her reaction made me wonder if she's ever "met" a white person before.
On the way to go pick Masato up from his job we stopped by the photo shop to choose the photos for the albums. They ordered an album for Masato with 3 pictures in it: him alone, the whole family and me, and him and me. They also ordered an album for me, but I can't remember which pictures we chose for that one. The whole order cost several hundred dollars. Since the lady that worked there knew Masato's mom she dropped 380¥ off the price to make it a nice even figure, and then she gave us all of the proofs and a free picture frame (worth about $8) for Masato and me.
When we arrived at Masato's cram school he wasn't done yet, so we had to wait for him to finish. The school is on the second floor of a building, and on the first floor is an au shop, so I decided to go into the shop and ask them about Bluetooth for the phone. They spent a long time reading several manuals and trying to explain to me that it should just work, but then when we tried it with one of their phones it didn't work. I told them I thought that an adapter was needed, but it took them about 20 min. on the phone with the au help desk to discover that I was right about the adapter. Neither they nor the au help desk had any information about how to get the adapter. I pointed out the page in the back of the manual that said something about the adapter, and they said that the Japanese said that it was sold separately. I asked them where, and they didn't know, but said that au didn't sell it. That seems a bit weird, because all of the other stuff on that page is sold by au. Eventually they told me that I should ask at a computer store.
We went to a computer shop in the area to ask, but the guy was convinced that my computer couldn't do Bluetooth (it's built in to my laptop) and he said he wasn't able to get through to Apple on the phone to verify that I was right, so he didn't know. I'm beginning to think that someone at au thought that Bluetooth would never be used but thought that it would be good for marketing to add it as an optional feature, with the result that the phone can do Bluetooth as long as you have an adapter that doesn't exist.
While we were in the area we went to a store that had a bunch of food shops in the basement. Masato and Aki went to go buy a birthday present for a friend while the mom and I got food. She bought me takoyaki, which is sort of like breaded octopus balls. Take a look at the picture and you'll see what it is. You're supposed to put the same sauce and mayonnaise on it that you use for Okonomiyaki, but I didn't really like it when I ate Okonomiyaki so I didn't try it on the takoyaki. Takoyaki wasn't too bad, but it wasn't all that great either, so of the 10 balls I ate 4 and gave the other 6 to Masato and Aki when they got back.
On the way back to the house Aki decided she wanted steak for dinner, so we stopped at a steak place. It was sort of strange, because it seemed to be built in sort of a Mexican theme, but featured American steak. The menu had a big American (US) steak section, a small Australian steak section, and then there was a separate sheet with Japanese steak on it. We all got American steaks.
During dinner Aki said that she wanted to hear some English jokes. I don't really know any jokes, but I told them that the most (in)famous joke in English is "Why did the chicken cross the road?" and that there are quite a few jokes that play off of that joke. They didn't really get any of the jokes I tried to explain, and I discovered that most English jokes involve some sort of word games (words that have double meanings or sound alike or something like that). If you have a joke you think would translate well, let me know.
When we got back to their house we dropped off the mom and then headed over to give the birthday present to the girl who's birthday it was. She's been a friend of theirs since they were little kids. We rang the doorbell, and the girl's mom answered, and was really surprised to see me with them. She didn't know how to react, which was quite amusing for me. She relaxed a little bit when she discovered that I knew some Japanese.
12/30/03 - Tuesday
I don't think I did all that much today. When I wrote the summary of the day I couldn't think of anything to write other than what we had to eat.
For breakfast we had a sort of fried rice, that had bamboo shoots in it. It tasted fairly good. For lunch we had mochi which they made using a machine. You put rice and water in, and it heats and agitates it until it turns into mochi. We had both mochi with soy sauce on it and mochi with a green bean powder on it.
In the afternoon we went to a bookstore because they wanted to get some books to send back to my family (since I'd given them a few books for Christmas). They ended up getting two children's books with Japanese legends in them. We also looked in the CD section, but they didn't see what they were looking for. The salesman said that they might find what they wanted in a store called the Loft, which is near Sendai Station.
For dinner we had yakiniku, which is basically Korean Barbecue. There's a hot plate, and you put strips of meat and vegetables on it, and then when you think something's cooked enough for you you take it with your chop sticks and eat it. It was fairly good, except that they kept trying to give all the cow tongue to me. Cow tongue doesn't taste too bad, but it's really really tough.
12/31/03 - Wednesday
In Japan around New Year's people do what's called Oosouji (literally "big cleaning"), which involves opening the windows and doors of the house (in the middle of winter) and cleaning out the house. Mostly changing light bulbs (including ones that are still working perfectly fine) and dusting. It was fairly cold outside, which makes me wonder why they have the tradition of doing it in the middle of winter instead of doing it in the spring when it warms up. I guess they want to enter the new year with a clean house.
Anyway, one of the light bulbs that they had was the wrong size or something, so Masato and I went to Yamada Denki (an electronics store) to get a new one. On the way back we stopped at the gas station (the Japanese word is "gas stand") to get gas for the car and for the heater that they use to heat their room.
Most gas stations in Japan are full service, but Masato said that self service stations also exist. He paid for the gas using cards that looked similar to the bus cards and subway cards. We then had to wait in line for a while at the pump for the gas that they use in their heaters. Unfortunately, they "empty" gas containers that we brought with us weren't quite empty, and they leaked on the car seat in the back on our way there. We discovered this when we took them out to fill them up. We had 4 containers, each which held 20 L, so we got 80 L of gas. I don't know how much it cost, since the pumps only show the volume, not the price.
For lunch we went to a place that had all sort of cutlets. I got something made from chicken, I think. Aki ended up getting a spaghetti that didn't look much like spaghetti.
On the way back we stopped by Daiei, which had a big arcade connected to it. We played the taiko game a few times, and discovered that it's much harder than the home version, because the sticks are so heavy. Your arms get tired really quickly. We also found a token there (they called them medals, but they're tokens) that was for the little kids section. The little kids section was basically a big casino. All of the games were games that required a certain number of tokens, and if you did well you got more tokens. There were slot machines, and things like that, so that little kids could learn to gamble at a young age.
At that point we dropped Masato off at the subway station so that he could go visit a friend who was in town for a few days. Since Masato was gone, the scary neighbor lady (the one who's house we went to to make mochi) invited Aki and me to come over. We ate a bunch of traditional New Year's foods, all of which had some superstitious reason for eating it (for example, the beans were supposed to make you have lots of children, or something like that). One of the things they offered me was water boiled in an iron pot. They said it was so that the iron taste would be in the water, which they said was good for you. I declined the offer, since I've had the misfortune of having been to places in the US that had iron in the water and I didn't like the taste at all. Plus my mom thinks I may be getting too much iron anyway.
When we were about to leave (read: escape) she decided that I needed to get dressed up in a kimono, so she got her husband's kimono and dressed me up in it. She also gave me a bunch of junk that she'd been given as new year's presents, and then sent me back to Masato's house to show the kimono to his parents. I think she was also telling me that I should wear the kimono to the temple that evening, but since she'd put it on over my clothes it was really hot, so I took it off after getting back to Masato's house.
For dinner we had several things, including a frozen pizza which was complete with all the normal Japanese pizza toppings. This means that in addition to normal American toppings it also had eggs, corn, and mayonnaise on it. I didn't like the mayonnaise on the pizza, but the eggs and corn were OK.
During the evening we watched a bunch of Japanese music awards on TV, and then at about 9:40 PM we had to eat soba. Evidently it's a Japanese tradition to eat this dish on this night. They said that eating the soba was supposed to symbolize living a simple life, or something like that.
At about 11:30 PM we left for a shrine in the area. Aki is graduating from middle school this year, and so she'll be taking her high school entrance exams starting the 30th. Getting into a good high school is very important, so she's been studying quite hard. Anyway, when we got to the shrine Masato's family paid about 5,000¥ ($50) to have a priest pray for her exams. We had to sit in a waiting room for a while until they were ready. While we were waiting Masato complained that they didn't have any manga (Japanese comic books) in the bookshelf, which surprised me. I wouldn't have expected them to have something like that in a shrine.
Shortly after midnight they came and took us into a room on the second story of the temple. It was interesting, because we were inside with the priest, and there were a bunch of people outside ringing the bells, throwing their money into the offering boxes, clapping their hands, and praying on the first floor outside.
I asked if I could use my camera, and the priest (is that the correct word?) said that I could as long as I didn't go into the inner part of the temple. I ended up taking a 10 minute movie with my camera, which covered most of the prayer. I missed the beginning (which means I missed the part where the priest beat on the big Japanese drum) because I wasn't set up in time, and I missed the very end because the camera wasn't fast enough process more than that. The movie is about 174 MB, but if any of you are interested in seeing let me know and I'll see what I can do about getting it to you.
After the prayer the priest gave Aki a bag full of the trinkets that they sell at the shrine shop, and then we went back down to the first floor. There was quite a long line of people waiting in line for their prayers, so it's a good thing we got there early or we would have had to wait much longer. There was also a stand out in the courtyard that was giving away "sake from the gods," and they had a wooden dragon head that you could put your head into for good luck. The line in front of the bells and offering boxes was also quite long.
Also note that I'm planning on revamping the picture section, so that things are better organized and easier to update for me. The pictures posted on the website have been compressed, so if you happen to see a picture there that you would like I can send you the original file. The originals are about 1MB in size.
12/29/03 - Monday
Today Masato had to go to his part time job, which is teaching at a cram school. I think he's an English and Japanese language teacher, but I'm not really sure.
On the way back from dropping him off, his mom and I ended up stopping at an Okonomiyaki (sorry if I spell it wrong, it's a bit hard to type since with my keyboard layout almost all the letters are on the left hand side) restaurant for lunch, since I've never had Okonomiyaki before and wanted to try it. The restaurant seemed to be trying to present a "traditional Japan" atmosphere, which included having the lockers for your shoes at the door, and having to sit on mats on the floor. It was nicely done.
While I was in the bathroom, his mom ordered for us, and by the time I got back they had already brought the materials for making it. In this place, there's a big pan embedded in the middle of the table, and you make your own Okonomiyaki. I've heard Okonomiyaki called Japanese pizza, but I think a much better description would be an omelet with more vegetables and less egg.
I thought it tasted OK, but I didn't like it all that much. I'm not sure what kind I had, but I think it was a seafood flavor, which may explain why I didn't like it all that much. Since I didn't get a chance to see the menu, I have no idea what kind of things are available as far as Okonomiyaki goes.
After lunch we went to a department store (I think it's called "D2" or something like that) to get some decorations for New Years. There I saw some foam pads that I thought would be perfect for putting under my DDR pads to give them some padding (dancing on the tile floor is hard on my feet). These pads, however, were a bit smaller than I thought the DDR pads are, so we asked if there were any bigger ones. The saleslady brought some thermal blanket pad things from the camping section, and we thought that those would probably be big enough if we put two of them together. Masato's mom asked if there was anything else I needed or wanted, and I told her no. I couldn't think of anything I needed, and anyway, I felt bad that they were spending as much money as they were on me. I wouldn't be surprised that they would drive themselves into bankruptcy before they stopped offering to buy stuff for me.
After the store we went to a little building which contained a machine used to shell rice. You stick in some coins, dump in the rice, and it comes out all white and pretty. I'm surprised they don't have a home version of this, since the Japanese eat so much rice.
By this time it was time to go get Aki from her cram school. When we got there Aki said that her friend wanted to meet me, so I got out of the car and went to the entrance to meet her friend. The friend hid behind Aki and wouldn't say anything. Her reaction made me wonder if she's ever "met" a white person before.
On the way to go pick Masato up from his job we stopped by the photo shop to choose the photos for the albums. They ordered an album for Masato with 3 pictures in it: him alone, the whole family and me, and him and me. They also ordered an album for me, but I can't remember which pictures we chose for that one. The whole order cost several hundred dollars. Since the lady that worked there knew Masato's mom she dropped 380¥ off the price to make it a nice even figure, and then she gave us all of the proofs and a free picture frame (worth about $8) for Masato and me.
When we arrived at Masato's cram school he wasn't done yet, so we had to wait for him to finish. The school is on the second floor of a building, and on the first floor is an au shop, so I decided to go into the shop and ask them about Bluetooth for the phone. They spent a long time reading several manuals and trying to explain to me that it should just work, but then when we tried it with one of their phones it didn't work. I told them I thought that an adapter was needed, but it took them about 20 min. on the phone with the au help desk to discover that I was right about the adapter. Neither they nor the au help desk had any information about how to get the adapter. I pointed out the page in the back of the manual that said something about the adapter, and they said that the Japanese said that it was sold separately. I asked them where, and they didn't know, but said that au didn't sell it. That seems a bit weird, because all of the other stuff on that page is sold by au. Eventually they told me that I should ask at a computer store.
We went to a computer shop in the area to ask, but the guy was convinced that my computer couldn't do Bluetooth (it's built in to my laptop) and he said he wasn't able to get through to Apple on the phone to verify that I was right, so he didn't know. I'm beginning to think that someone at au thought that Bluetooth would never be used but thought that it would be good for marketing to add it as an optional feature, with the result that the phone can do Bluetooth as long as you have an adapter that doesn't exist.
While we were in the area we went to a store that had a bunch of food shops in the basement. Masato and Aki went to go buy a birthday present for a friend while the mom and I got food. She bought me takoyaki, which is sort of like breaded octopus balls. Take a look at the picture and you'll see what it is. You're supposed to put the same sauce and mayonnaise on it that you use for Okonomiyaki, but I didn't really like it when I ate Okonomiyaki so I didn't try it on the takoyaki. Takoyaki wasn't too bad, but it wasn't all that great either, so of the 10 balls I ate 4 and gave the other 6 to Masato and Aki when they got back.
On the way back to the house Aki decided she wanted steak for dinner, so we stopped at a steak place. It was sort of strange, because it seemed to be built in sort of a Mexican theme, but featured American steak. The menu had a big American (US) steak section, a small Australian steak section, and then there was a separate sheet with Japanese steak on it. We all got American steaks.
During dinner Aki said that she wanted to hear some English jokes. I don't really know any jokes, but I told them that the most (in)famous joke in English is "Why did the chicken cross the road?" and that there are quite a few jokes that play off of that joke. They didn't really get any of the jokes I tried to explain, and I discovered that most English jokes involve some sort of word games (words that have double meanings or sound alike or something like that). If you have a joke you think would translate well, let me know.
When we got back to their house we dropped off the mom and then headed over to give the birthday present to the girl who's birthday it was. She's been a friend of theirs since they were little kids. We rang the doorbell, and the girl's mom answered, and was really surprised to see me with them. She didn't know how to react, which was quite amusing for me. She relaxed a little bit when she discovered that I knew some Japanese.
12/30/03 - Tuesday
I don't think I did all that much today. When I wrote the summary of the day I couldn't think of anything to write other than what we had to eat.
For breakfast we had a sort of fried rice, that had bamboo shoots in it. It tasted fairly good. For lunch we had mochi which they made using a machine. You put rice and water in, and it heats and agitates it until it turns into mochi. We had both mochi with soy sauce on it and mochi with a green bean powder on it.
In the afternoon we went to a bookstore because they wanted to get some books to send back to my family (since I'd given them a few books for Christmas). They ended up getting two children's books with Japanese legends in them. We also looked in the CD section, but they didn't see what they were looking for. The salesman said that they might find what they wanted in a store called the Loft, which is near Sendai Station.
For dinner we had yakiniku, which is basically Korean Barbecue. There's a hot plate, and you put strips of meat and vegetables on it, and then when you think something's cooked enough for you you take it with your chop sticks and eat it. It was fairly good, except that they kept trying to give all the cow tongue to me. Cow tongue doesn't taste too bad, but it's really really tough.
12/31/03 - Wednesday
In Japan around New Year's people do what's called Oosouji (literally "big cleaning"), which involves opening the windows and doors of the house (in the middle of winter) and cleaning out the house. Mostly changing light bulbs (including ones that are still working perfectly fine) and dusting. It was fairly cold outside, which makes me wonder why they have the tradition of doing it in the middle of winter instead of doing it in the spring when it warms up. I guess they want to enter the new year with a clean house.
Anyway, one of the light bulbs that they had was the wrong size or something, so Masato and I went to Yamada Denki (an electronics store) to get a new one. On the way back we stopped at the gas station (the Japanese word is "gas stand") to get gas for the car and for the heater that they use to heat their room.
Most gas stations in Japan are full service, but Masato said that self service stations also exist. He paid for the gas using cards that looked similar to the bus cards and subway cards. We then had to wait in line for a while at the pump for the gas that they use in their heaters. Unfortunately, they "empty" gas containers that we brought with us weren't quite empty, and they leaked on the car seat in the back on our way there. We discovered this when we took them out to fill them up. We had 4 containers, each which held 20 L, so we got 80 L of gas. I don't know how much it cost, since the pumps only show the volume, not the price.
For lunch we went to a place that had all sort of cutlets. I got something made from chicken, I think. Aki ended up getting a spaghetti that didn't look much like spaghetti.
On the way back we stopped by Daiei, which had a big arcade connected to it. We played the taiko game a few times, and discovered that it's much harder than the home version, because the sticks are so heavy. Your arms get tired really quickly. We also found a token there (they called them medals, but they're tokens) that was for the little kids section. The little kids section was basically a big casino. All of the games were games that required a certain number of tokens, and if you did well you got more tokens. There were slot machines, and things like that, so that little kids could learn to gamble at a young age.
At that point we dropped Masato off at the subway station so that he could go visit a friend who was in town for a few days. Since Masato was gone, the scary neighbor lady (the one who's house we went to to make mochi) invited Aki and me to come over. We ate a bunch of traditional New Year's foods, all of which had some superstitious reason for eating it (for example, the beans were supposed to make you have lots of children, or something like that). One of the things they offered me was water boiled in an iron pot. They said it was so that the iron taste would be in the water, which they said was good for you. I declined the offer, since I've had the misfortune of having been to places in the US that had iron in the water and I didn't like the taste at all. Plus my mom thinks I may be getting too much iron anyway.
When we were about to leave (read: escape) she decided that I needed to get dressed up in a kimono, so she got her husband's kimono and dressed me up in it. She also gave me a bunch of junk that she'd been given as new year's presents, and then sent me back to Masato's house to show the kimono to his parents. I think she was also telling me that I should wear the kimono to the temple that evening, but since she'd put it on over my clothes it was really hot, so I took it off after getting back to Masato's house.
For dinner we had several things, including a frozen pizza which was complete with all the normal Japanese pizza toppings. This means that in addition to normal American toppings it also had eggs, corn, and mayonnaise on it. I didn't like the mayonnaise on the pizza, but the eggs and corn were OK.
During the evening we watched a bunch of Japanese music awards on TV, and then at about 9:40 PM we had to eat soba. Evidently it's a Japanese tradition to eat this dish on this night. They said that eating the soba was supposed to symbolize living a simple life, or something like that.
At about 11:30 PM we left for a shrine in the area. Aki is graduating from middle school this year, and so she'll be taking her high school entrance exams starting the 30th. Getting into a good high school is very important, so she's been studying quite hard. Anyway, when we got to the shrine Masato's family paid about 5,000¥ ($50) to have a priest pray for her exams. We had to sit in a waiting room for a while until they were ready. While we were waiting Masato complained that they didn't have any manga (Japanese comic books) in the bookshelf, which surprised me. I wouldn't have expected them to have something like that in a shrine.
Shortly after midnight they came and took us into a room on the second story of the temple. It was interesting, because we were inside with the priest, and there were a bunch of people outside ringing the bells, throwing their money into the offering boxes, clapping their hands, and praying on the first floor outside.
I asked if I could use my camera, and the priest (is that the correct word?) said that I could as long as I didn't go into the inner part of the temple. I ended up taking a 10 minute movie with my camera, which covered most of the prayer. I missed the beginning (which means I missed the part where the priest beat on the big Japanese drum) because I wasn't set up in time, and I missed the very end because the camera wasn't fast enough process more than that. The movie is about 174 MB, but if any of you are interested in seeing let me know and I'll see what I can do about getting it to you.
After the prayer the priest gave Aki a bag full of the trinkets that they sell at the shrine shop, and then we went back down to the first floor. There was quite a long line of people waiting in line for their prayers, so it's a good thing we got there early or we would have had to wait much longer. There was also a stand out in the courtyard that was giving away "sake from the gods," and they had a wooden dragon head that you could put your head into for good luck. The line in front of the bells and offering boxes was also quite long.
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